Surface Tension

No.. thats not anything like the Vodaphone OR Reliance takeover bid of Essar-Hutch. Its just that I said tata to reliance. No, thats not the same as bata to carona, or birla to yamaha. Its plain and simple tata to reliance. Thats it. No more questions. Shet!!!

Okay, there was this option before me to upgrade my mobile handset to the newly launched Nokia 6255 CDMA.

But then I didnt want to spend 15000 bucks to get a reliance phone on which I wont even be able to change networks suppose there is no connectivity. I thought it was worthless to upgrade to a reliance connection itself after getting a new handset. So I kept waiting….. I didnt want to change my number as this was my number ever since I got my mobile and everyone and anyone whom I knew or who knew me had this very same number. Decisions kept pending……

Then came my birthday and vidhya_m_82 wanted to gift me a new mobile. The gift item itself was a subject of hot discussion and after 100′s of choices that I myself threw and rejected, I decided that I would like a new mobile. That sounded the best investment to me among all my choices among which were

1) Upgrade to PC
2) New Laptop
3) XBOX 360
4) SLR Camera
5) God knows what else…

Now that I had decided on the new handset, the next dilemma was which one? I am damn fussy about what I buy. It should have every mobile feature on the planet (as does everyone), but of course manufacturers cannot manufacture such phones, else they would be a *one-model* phone company. So what all was I looking for in a mobile? Here are my requirements in order of importance to me (May be a little mixed up, but who cares)

) Bluetooth
) Music player with upgradable memory
) Multiple Bands (Tri/Quad) so that I can use the same thing while roaming anywhere
) Good color display with large screen
) OS where I can write my own programs
) Compact and pocketable
) Good battery life
) Good durability and reliability and service
) Camera
) Not very costly – I dont want to worry my head off about scratching/losing my phone wherever I go.

Obviously I cant get such a phone. My preferences for brands were narrowed down to Sony-Ericsson and Nokia as they were the market leaders and most durable and have loads of service centers around. SE has the better battery life and scored over Nokia. Samsung, LG, Motorola miss many vital features in the high end phone of late such as FM, expandable memory etc. I narrowed my choice of models to the Nokia N Series, SE Walkman Series and a few others here and there. The N series were at the top of my wish list, but I didnt prefer them because of the huge size and higher costs. But everything else was in favour of them. I mean, they had almost any feature that I would ever want especially the top models like N80, N93(prohibitevely bulky). On the other hand, the SE ones looked damn cool and had awesome color options. Battery life was great and they had great displays and OS speed. But then they dont use symbian and it would be tough to get third party games and applications. I couldnt say much about the software support for the phone. Plus sony has left a bad taste in my mouth because of certain quality issues that they have folllowed of late regarding Laptop Batteries and H1 Cameras, plus generally their products(other than mobiles) are overpriced than competing products for hardly any superior features.

After shifting countless pebbles from one hand to another, running from shop to shop for the best deals, spending infinite hours on the internet and gsmarena and other mobile review sites, I made my decision. I decided to go for the Nokia 5500 Sport. It was a tough decision, but I managed to make it and before I could change my mind, I dragged vidhya_m_82 to the store and the moment we got a good deal we bought the mobile.

This is one really amazing piece of equipment. It of course did not satisfy my needs in some ways but then I bought it because it did satisfy me in more ways than the other ones could. Some features that I fell for including some really amazing feature are –

* Connectivity to any 3.5mm headphone – So I am not restricted to the standard nokia earphones.
* Bluetooth connectivity.
* FM Radio.
* Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition OS – One of the latest OS. Makes it a super compact smartphone on the same level as the N series.
* Triband connectivity.
* Expandable memory.
* 256K color display.
* Very compact – similar in size to the legendary 3310.
* Decent 2MP camera.

Some sooper dooper features that got me fida on it are -

* Stainless steel body casing to resists impacts.
* Rubber padding all around to make it dust proof and water proof.
* 3D gyro sensor in the phone – does some amazing tricks.
* Tap sensor – Tap twice on the body to pause/resume music playback. Tap twice on the left or right sides to go to the next/prev track.
* Tap sensor – Tap twice in sports mode to give read out, tap twice when message comes to automatically read out the message using TTS engine.
* Pedometer – Used in sports mode to track fitness activities like speed, distance and time for running, walking, stairclimbing etc.
* GPS connectivity – Can be used wtih Bluetooth GPS sensor to aid sports mode measurements and also in navigation, bookmarking etc.
* Groove Labyrinth game – Involves steering a metal ball in a maze. Here I can just tilt the phone in the direction I want the ball to move and it moves. Cool na?

Feature that I would have liked –

* Bigger Screen – Gets irritating to play scaled games till games are optimised for the 5500
* Quadband Connectivity
* Hot swappable memory card
* Wi-Fi support

Take a look at the various crash tests performed on the phone here. Includes washing the phone in water after dumping in milk and beer and dropping the fone from various heights including 6m and running over the phone with a car.

On a further note, I took an Airtel corporate connection and am expecting it to get activated by tonite.

Some phone worthy of mention in this quest to the top were Nokia’s N80, N73, Sony Ericsson’s W850i, W710i (another sports phone)

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Tagged: 5500, n series, n80, n93, nokia, sony-ericsson, w850